The slimmed down IDF budget and reform program are powerfully opposed by distinguished military figures at home who say that junking tanks and ground forces is too risky in the current Middle East climate.

Braving Washington’s warning of civil strife, Egyptian Defense Minister Gen. Abdel Fattah El-Sisi is not backing away from his resolve to quickly crack down, even by military force, on armed protesters using live bullets on city streets and generating chaos, on Salafist terror in Sinai coupled with a Muslim Brotherhood uprising, and on its Palestinian Hamas collaborators in the Gaza Strip. debkafile: The general’s call for mass rallies Friday in support of the military and against the Muslim Brotherhood carries a high risk of tipping Egypt into civil war.

Six Muslim Brotherhood officials have escaped from Egypt and arrived in the Gaza Strip to lead the movement’s uprising against the military, debkafile discloses exclusively. Headed by Mahmud Izzat Ibrahim, a Supreme Guide deputy known as the MB’s ‘iron man,” the group has set up a command post at the Gaza Beach Hotel and is working in close conjunction with Hamas and armed Al Qaeda-linked Salafist Bedouin in Sinai. The Egyptian army may be planning to raid the hotel and bring the MB escapees to trial in Cairo.

For more than two and a half years, Dr. Ramzi Mowafi, once Osama bin Laden’s personal physician, has led the most dangerous terrorist group in Sinai, Ansar al Jihad in the Sinai Peninsula, debkafile reveals. A charismatic figure and able operational commander, Mowafi has gathered a following of 7,000 to 9,000 armed men. Incoming intelligence showing Dr. Mowafi to be organizing a large group of Sinai terrorists for a major cross-border attack in Israel as well as on Egyptian forces has kept IDF border units on high alert for the past two weeks.

An Egyptian military offensive, dubbed Fattah 2 (Conquest 2), begins Friday, July 19 against a coalition of Salafists and Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas and Jihad Islami groups terrorizing Sinai. Egypt’s Second Army and Third Army chiefs lead the campaign from command centers in El Arish and central Sinai. The Gaza Strip exits are sealed. Israeli forces along the Egyptian and Gaza borders are on alert, so too are the 2,600 Marines aboard two US amphibious helicopter carriers off the Red Sea shores of Southern Sinai and the Gulf of Suez.

Deputy Secretary of State William Burns, the first senior US official to visit Cairo since the military coup, had a tough two-hour conversation with Defense minister Gen. Abdel Fattah El-Sisi Monday. The general advised Washington to be more realistic about Egypt. Burns called for an Egypt that is "stable, democratic, inclusive and tolerant." El-Sisi replied that in ousting Morsi, the military had obeyed the authentic will of the Egyptian people. He implied bilateral military ties might suffer if the US suspended military aid to Egypt.

Egyptian and Israeli forces raised alert levels Friday, July 5, after the Muslim Brotherhood declared a revolt against the army for ousting Mohamed Morsi on July 3. A “War Council” established in Sinai formed a coalition with Hamas, Jihad Islami and al-Qaeda-linked Salafists, following which gunmen mounted a multiple attack in northern Sinai. Egyptian Patriot anti-missile batteries and anti-air weapons systems were posted to protect Suez Canal shipping from rocket fire. An Egyptian officer warned the army would forcibly prevent the rise of an “Islamic caliphate” in Sinai.

Kuwait is the first Gulf emirate ready to act on the resolution of the recent Gulf Cooperation Council meeting in Jeddah to punish Hizballah for its “flagrant intervention in Syria” against “freedom fighters.” The Interior Ministry in Kuwait is about to “end the residency of some 2,000 Lebanese Shiite citizens” and shut down their financial and commercial businesses. debkafile: The mass deportation of Lebanese Shiites from the Gulf region will raise tensions with Iran and Hibzallah and may even spark retribution by Iranian and Hizballah sleeper cells.

Hamas has lost its financial sponsors. That is one reason to turn back to Tehran. Another is Assad’s offer to its war allies the chance of attacking Israel from Syrian soil. So why not switch back from the rebel side to Assad?

Assad’s al Qusayr victory Wednesday, June 6, presented the US, Israel and the Western alliance with a major strategic debacle. They paid the price of leaving the Syrian-Hizballah military machine orchestrated by Iranian officers a clear field. This machine is ready to trample Aleppo and southern Syria. Israel is next in its sights.

John Kerry faces more obstacles than realistic prospects for his many small steps toward reviving the Middle East peace process and bring Hamas as well as Abu Mazen to the negotiating table. For this he is counting on help from the Turkish prime minister and Qatari emir.

The furious Palestinian protesters of Hebron, Nablus and other West Bank towns and villages are in no mood to hear Israel’s side of any dispute. Their violent protests will continue regardless of whether or not Arafat Jaradat died in jail from Israel mistreatment, as the Palestinian Authority claims, or of heart failure, as Israel replies. Mahmoud Abbas appears to count on reining in the violence whenever he decides it has exhausted its political usefulness. But most intelligence watchers think he is playing with fire.

President Obama took some tough steps to weaken the Iranian front ahead of the direct US-Iranian nuclear talks beginning December 1. The latest is a March deadline for results. But US military strength is also lined up just in case face-to-face with Iran leads nowhere. Most significantly, in September, the Pentagon and the US Army completed the deployment of US military strength in strike position and intensified military pressure on the Assad regime.

Thursday night, Nov. 29, the UN General Assembly grants Palestine non-member observer status within the 1967 borders by majority vote. But to which Palestinian rule does it apply? Abbas’s Fatah is fading, whereas the extremist Hamas in the Gaza Strip is a rising force. If it qualifies for a place in the Sunni Middle East grouping Egypt, Turkey and Qatar are building with US backing and Israeli approval, Hamas may become the beneficiary of the upgraded Palestinian status won by Abbas.

“Israel will do all it can to prevent Iran from re-arming Hamas after its losses in our Gaza operation,” said Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz Sunday, Nov. 25.
But debkafile intelligence sources learn that Saturday, Nov. 24, just three days after the Gaza ceasefire, three Iranian missile engineers managed to steal into the Gaza Strip. They reached Gaza from their Lebanese base on false passports through Sinai and one of the smuggling tunnels blasted in the Israeli operation and repaired by Hamas.

The Hamas brought the Israeli offensive down on the Gaza Strip by pushing out the military envelope too far against Israel while it was still the weakest cog in Iran’s radical terror machine. When Obama learned of Khamenei’s design to convert the Gaza Strip into Iran’s southern front, he okayed the Israeli operation.